Heather Heyer’s mother on the fight for justice beyond Charlottesville

Last year on 12 August, three years after her 32-year-old daughter was murdered, Susan Bro reflected on the waves of grief and pain that followed, offering guidance for a nation which by then had seen more than 160,000 people die from coronavirus.

“It is common to the human experience to lose a loved one, and knowing I am not alone gives me comfort,” she wrote in a column in Fortune. “Waves crash over or lap gently from time to time, and the tears fall. But I keep looking ahead. I have work to do. I have a purpose for being here, and I choose to survive.”

Ms Bro’s daughter – antiracist activist Heather Heyer – was murdered on 12 August, 2017 when a white supremacist accelerated his car into a crowd of counter-protesters at a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. He killed Ms Heyer and injured 35 others.